现代大学英语精读5 Before_and_After_September_11课文翻译 译文

“9. 11”事件前后

泰?摩西

As the ruins of the World Trade Towers smoldered at the southern end of Manhattan and the breeze stirred the ashes of thousands of human beings, a new age of anxiety was born. If someone had slept through September 11 and awakened, Rip V an Winkle-like today, he would open his eyes on an astonishing new landscape.

1．世贸大厦双塔的废墟还在曼哈顿区南端闷燃，微风将几千人的身躯化成的灰烬吹起，一个新的焦虑时代由此开始。如果有人在9月11日那天像瑞普?凡?温克尔那样恰好睡去，一觉醒来，眼前的这一派景象定让他瞠日结舌。

Guardsmen toting M-16s are stationed at our airports. The president of the United States attends a World Series game and the airspace over Y ankee Stadium is closed, a line of snipers positioned on the stadium rooftop. The vice-president's safekeepers whisk him from place to place, just as his arch-nemesis Osama bin Laden is presumably moved from cave to cave halfway across the world. Anthrax panic sends Congress running from its chambers.

2．机场里驻进了背着V-16自动步枪的国民警卫队员。纽约扬基体育场上空的空域因美国总统亲临美国两大职业棒球联赛的决赛而关闭，禁止飞机通过。体育场的屋顶之上还部署了一排狙击手。副总统的保卫员们忙不迭地将他不断转移，正如他那难以对付的仇敌奥萨马?本?拉丹一样，据推测他此刻也在世界另一头从一个山洞转移到另一个山洞。议员们在炭疽病的恐慌中弃岗而逃。

The events of September 11 divided our world into two radically different eras. We watch wistfully as the pre-9/11 world drifts away on its raft of memory, cast in Technicolor shades of nostalgia. We will remember that assassinated world as idyllic, secure (never mind that it was neither), we will speak of it in the reverent tones reserved for the dead.

3．“9?11”事件将我们的世界划为截然不同的两个时代。我们带着惆怅，目送“9?11”之前的世界在怀旧的暗淡色彩中随记忆的小筏渐渐漂走远去。在我们的记忆中，这个突遭袭击的世界永远如诗如面，牢不可破(虽然实际并非如此)。谈到它时，我们总是像在谈论亡灵，语气异常恭敬。

Meanwhile, the post 9/11 era looms like an unmapped wilderness. As with other unclaimed territories throughout history, a fierce battle is being waged for its psychic, political and material capital. Former president Bill Clinton has called this conflict "the struggle for the soul of the 21st century", and the spoils of war include some of our most cherished values and liberties. Leading the charge are the warriors of the Bush Administration, a battalion of securitycrats and generals who are attempting to colonize the future with their own repressive agenda.

4．与此同时，“9?11”之后的日子就像没有标志的荒地呈现在人们面前。与历史上前几次拓荒一样，这场激烈的精神、政治和物质的资本战正在打响。前总统比尔?克林顿称这次较量是“争夺21世纪灵魂的战争”，最后的战利品还包括我们最珍视的价值观和自由。在这场战争中，布什政府的将士们首当其冲，这些视国家安全重于民众自由的官员们准备把他们一贯实行的镇压政策带入未来。

But there is a brighter side, a growing chorus of dissenting voices who reject paranoia and hubris and question the rush toward becoming a security state. There is a dialectic afoot in the country, a stirring of peaceful purpose that has been largely ignored by the mainstream media, which assumes the public is thinking in red, white and blue, when actually the spectrum of emotions, ideas and opinions is, like America itself, multihued.

5．不过，光明的一面仍旧存在：越来越多的人开始反对这种多疑和自大，并对这种视安全

为国家最高目标的做法提出质疑。人们开始辩证地思考，对基本上得不到主流媒体重视的和平这一主题热烈讨论。主流媒体一直以为公众的想法只有红、白、蓝三种颜色，殊不知人们的情感、思想和观点正如美国本身，是多姿多彩的。

Just before his death in November 2001, Ken Kesey described the state of the union in succinctly Keseyian terms: "The men in suits are telling us what the men in uniforms are going to do to the men in turbans if they don't turn over the men in hiding.” With the prescience of a dying man, Kesey ventured that this was really a war between the brutal, aggressively male way things had always been and "the timorous and fragile way things might begin to be". Like many Americans continue to do, Kesey nurtured great hopes for a future constructed on a model of mutual cooperation, trust and rational thinking.

6．在2001年11月肯?凯西去世前夕，他以独有的简洁对美国做了这样的描写：“穿西装的人(美国官员)告诉我们穿军装的人(美国军队)怎样对付一味窝藏他人(本?拉丹及“基地”组织成员)的人(塔利班)。”即将离开人世的人具有的先知使凯西大胆地将这场战争称做仍是历史上一直存在的野蛮的雄性侵略性方式和“或许刚刚处于萌芽阶段的胆怯和脆弱的处理方式”的角逐。和许多仍旧持这种观点的美国人一样，凯西渴望未来的世界能够建立在互相合作、信任和理智的思考之上。

No Longer Invulnerable

7 The attacks in New Y ork and Washington shattered the sense of invulnerability that is a hallmark of the American psyche. After 9/11, we looked at each other with new eyes, asked new questions. If you found yourself trapped in a doomed airplane with a cell phone in hand, who would you call? Pundits wrote that the country had lost its innocence, overlooking the fact that innocence is not a desirable quality in a superpower nation.

不再坚不可摧

7．纽约和华盛顿遭受的恐怖袭击使美国人不再相信无所不胜这一美国精神的主要特征。“9?11”事件之后，我们用新眼光对视，并提出新的问题。如果你乘坐的飞机就要失事，你会用手中的移动电话与谁通话?学者们认为这个国家已经不再纯真，却没有认识到纯真对一个超级大国并不可取。

Overnight, the United States perceived a sword of Damocles suspended over its head and the ensuing waves of paranoia initiated surreal episodes: a nationwide run on gas masks; a demand from the Postal Service that all mail be irradiated against biological threats; and, most appalling of all, Op-Eds that declared using nuclear weapons against Muslim countries would be justified if terrorists killed so much as one more American.

8．一夜之间，美国感觉到达摩克利斯剑正悬挂在头上，一个接一个以多疑为主调的超现实的插曲出现了：全国抢购防毒面具，邮局辐照所有邮件，严防生物袭击，更让人感到可怕的是专栏上发表的文章，有人扬言，如果再有一名美国人因恐怖分子死亡，美国政府将有理由对穆斯林国家动用核武器。

Among the unavoidable truths to emerge from 9/11 is that being on U. S. soil does not render us immune from harm. The American people now have much more in common with millions of the planet's citizens who spend their lives in regions where armed conflict or terrorism take innocent lives daily. We too are mired near the bottom of Maslow's pyramid, struggling to regain our lost sense of safety and security.

9．“9?11”事件让我们认识到许多无可争辩的事实，其中有一点就是即使在美国本土也无法保证我们免受伤害。美国人现在和世界上千百万生活在武装冲突和恐怖活动每天都夺走

生命的地区的人们有了更多共同之处。我们也陷在马斯洛金字塔的底层，为重获安全感而挣扎。

The new Zeitgeist even has Ally McBeal registering concern about world events. Relationships, laments Ally Mc Beal, were easier "before the world changed back in September". On NYPD Blue, a detective rebukes another detective that he isn't "the only one affected by what happened at the World Trade Center".

10．这种新的时代精神竟然会让艾丽?麦克比尔这位从不关心政治的人对世界大事也开始担心起来。艾丽?麦克比尔认为人与人之间的关系“在9月世界变化之前”并非如此困难，对此他感到十分痛惜。《纽约重案组》中，一个侦探指责另一侦探，说他并不是“世贸大厦事件惟一的受害者”。

The most visible symptom of our profound psychological trauma is a zealous new patriotism. Seeking solace, the country drapes itself in the American flag like a child in a superhero cape who plays at being invincible. From homes, vehicles and clothing to department store windows, billboards and television commercials, there are few places in the country where the Stars and Stripes has not found a purchase. People who never gave the flag much thought except on the Fourth of July have become suddenly, passionately, patriotic. For some of us, patriotism is a complicated matter, linked with a dedication to the Constitution. But the now inescapable presence of the flag, supposedly a symbol of American pride and unity, sometime looks: suspiciously like overcompensation for a wounded ego. The flag is an icon,a brand that offers no more protection than the Nike swoosh.

11．我们这种巨大的心理创伤最明显的症状就是一种新的狂热的爱国主义。为了寻求安慰，全国上下都裹进了国旗，就像一个披着超人斗篷扮无敌英雄的小孩子。家里、各种交通工具上、衣服上、商店的橱窗里、广告牌上、电视广告里……星条旗处处可见。以前除了在7月4日之外不会想到国旗的人现在一下子都充满激情地成了爱国者。对我们某些人来说，爱国主义是个复杂的东西，与是否忠于宪法有关。可是现在，无处不在的国旗可能象征着美国的自豪和统一，有时看上去未免像是对受伤的自我的过度补偿。国旗不过是个象征，它能够给人提供的保护不会与带有耐克品牌标志的商品有多大差异。

A Hardening of Outlook

12 It has not been fashionable for some time to assign oracular qualities to Orwell's novel, 1984. Y et the book has much to say to our fractured, post 9/11 era. In Orwell's dystopia,”'practices which has been long abandoned, in some cases for hundreds of years—imprisonment without trial.. public executions, torture to extract confe?ssions, , , not only became common again, but were tolerated and even defended by people who considered themselves enlightened and progressive. " These paroxysmal social changes, Orwell wrote, began with a "general hardening of outlook”.

观点的硬化

12．人们曾一度不再认为奥韦尔的小说《1984》是一部预言，不过小说巾的描写与我们“9?1l”事件之后这不再完整的时代的确大有相似之处。他描写反面乌托邦时说，“一些长期以来已经放弃不用的做法，有些甚至几百年来都已废除的做法，例如未经审讯即监禁……公开处决、严刑拷打逼供……不仅又普遍实行起来，而且也为那些自认为开明进步的人所容忍，甚至辩护。”奥韦尔认为这种突发的社会变化起源于“普遍硬化的观点”。

13 In the U. S. today, this hardening of outlook is called the war against terrorism.

14 At its forefront, the new defenders of the Homeland are defining its motives, methods and mentality, But many of us define our personal safely and our national character by the very civil liberties that are being compromised in the name of state security. What we are in the process of giving up may prove to be far more precious than what was taken from us on September 11.

13．如今的美国将这种观点的硬化称为反恐战。

14．在最前线，国家的新护卫们正制定作战目标、作战方法并进行心理准备。不过，我们许多人是用公民的自由来定义个人安全和民族性的，而这些自由现在在国家安全的名义下不得不做出让步。我们现在正在放弃的可能会远远超过“9?1l”事件从我们身边带走的。

In the weeks after the attacks, for example, the Justice Department arrested scores of young Arab and Muslim men and held them without charge, in undisclosed locations. Their names were not released, nor were they permuted to send word to their families , They simply vanished. Georgetown University law professor David Cole calls this” the practice of disappearance , and it is something we associate with repressive regimes, not with participatory democracies. Not only do such activities compromise the nation's integrity at home but they are sure to undermine American credibility abroad. If we cannot adhere lo our own ideals and values, to the standards we've called on other nations to adhere to in the past, then we call into question some of our fundamental assumptions about who we are.

15．比如，在恐怖事件后的几周内，司法部未经审判便秘密逮捕了许多年轻的阿拉伯人和穆斯林教徒。不公布他们的名字，也不允许他们通知其家人。他们就此消失。乔治城大学法学教授戴维?科尔将其称为“失踪惯例”。我们往往认为这种惯例会出现在实行镇压政策的国家，不会出现在分享民主制的国家。这不仅会减少国人对我国的公正的信心而且一定会在国际上影响美国的可信度。如果我们无法再坚持我们的理想和价值观，无法坚持我们在过去一直号召其他国家遵守的准则，那么我们就会对自己的身份这一基本的假定产生怀疑。

Must We Shop ‘til We Drop?

16 An Orthodox rabbi once told me that when you are in control, you prepare for those times when you are out of control. The rabbi was speaking of interpersonal relationships, but his dictum could easily be applied to the current geopolitical situation. To wit: Take an oil-dependent nation that consumes 20 million barrels of oil every day, The nation is in receasion and has just gone to war in the region that supplies most of the oil. Would it not be wise, patriotic even, for said nation to cut back on its oil consumption?

我们一定要买到底?

16．一位正统派犹太教教士曾经和我说过要未雨绸缪。这位教士谈的虽是人际关系，但这句名言也非常适合当今的地缘政治情况。也就是说，让我们看看这个日耗油达2000万桶的离不开石油的国家。这个国家正在走入萧条，刚刚对给他提供大部分油料的地区宣战。难道减少对石油的消耗不是明智又爱国的举动吗?

Y et sales of sport utility vehicles, those infamous gas-guzzlers, are up, expected to surpass, for the first time ever, sales of passenger cars. Automakers rejoice in this as a patriotic act. "Business and consumers need to pull together to strengthen our nation's confidence and to keep the economy moving forward, " said GM vice president Bill Lovejoy, buoyed by projected sales figures of 3. 5 million SUVs.

17．可是，运动型多用途车和耗油量大得惊人的油老虎的销量却一直在上升，预计将首

次超过小客车的销量。汽车制造商对这一爱国行为异常兴奋。“商家和消费者应该携手为树立全国人民的信心、保持经济发展做出努力，”通用公司副总裁比尔?洛夫乔伊对运动型多用途车的预计销量将达到350万辆充满信心。

Just after the attacks, a renewed sense of community was visible across the nation as Americans saw their own grief, fear and concern reflected by friends and neighbors. There was a relaxing of the rampant materialism, along with its ugly stepsisters isolation and compulsion, that has been the undoing of community in this country. Community cannot compete with shopping malls or 200 satellite television channels, with Gameboys or the 70-hour workweek. Community requires people gathering with others and talking, singing, questioning and arguing, a rialto where ideas and creativity are the currency.

18．恐怖袭击刚刚过去，美国人在朋友和邻居身上看到了他们自己的痛苦、恐惧和忧虑，人们将目光又重新投向了社区。一度泛滥的物质主义和随之而来的可怕的孤独感和强迫症曾经让社区从这个国家的人们心中消失。社区比不上大购物中心，比不上200多个卫星电视频道，比不了电子游戏，也比不了70小时的工作周。社区需要人们走出家门，欢聚畅谈，放声高歌，互问互答，辩论输赢。它是一个市场，而思想和创新就是用来完成交换的中介。Since our economy is dependent upon mass consumerism, however, it wasn't long before government and big business invented the concept of "economic patriotism". This Frankensteinian creation asserts that consumption is an American value, extols the nepenthean powers of the dollar and in effect, discourages national introspection at a time when it would be most valuable. Presidential exhortations to get back to normal assumed we would want to restore the world we had as quickly as possible. But not everyone is content to shut up and shop. The pre-9/11 world cannot be restored, not with a credit card, not with a new car. Many of us want to build on that nascent community. Many citizens concerned about the deteriorating economy are resisting the consumption orgy and are exploring alternatives that would make our country more self-sufficient and prepare us for the tough times that may lie ahead.

19．可是，既然我们的经济的存在取决于大众消费，很快，政府和大工商企业就杜撰出了一个“经济爱国主义”的概念。这个弗兰肯斯坦式的概念主张消费是美国价值观，认为美元会让人忘掉一切忧愁。实际上，这是在阻碍人们进行理性的反思，而在此时这种反思又是十分重要的。布什总统号召人们将工作和生活恢复正常，他认为我们希望尽快地重建以前的世界。不过，不是人人都乐于保持沉默．买个不停。“9.11”之前的世界一去不复返，不管是信用卡还是新汽车都换不回。我们当中有好多人希望加入到这个刚刚显示出生命力的社区中来。许多担心经济恶化的公民都拒绝无节制的消费，而且正在寻找措施，以便使我国更加自给自足，并且随时准备应付今后会出现的艰难时刻。

History's Lessons

20 An anonymous rescuer, digging in the rubble of WTC, spoke of his struggle to express to his family what Ground Zero was like. But every time he tried to speak he found himself mute. There exists no suitable analogy for those murdered buildings, for the thousands of lives snuffed out by suicidal terrorists armed with box cutters. September 11 is not like anything but itself.

历史的教训

20．一个未留下姓名的救援人员，在世贸大厦的废墟中救援时，说他无法向家人描述爆炸中心地带的情况。每次要开口时，他都发现自己无话可说。一群自杀性的恐怖分子用几把开箱刀。就可以让高楼倒塌，几千人的生命一下子消失，这样的事情没有先例，无法类比。“9?11”就是“9?11”。

True, 9/11 is the crisis of our time, our national flashpoint, but it is only one of many such flashpoints in history. This is far from the first time that powerful external forces have impinged upon human beings in a modem society, and it is not the first time those forces have been called evil. Each time it seems the crisis must generate a new paradigm in which such an atrocity will never be allowed to happen again—and yet it does happen again. In 1941, in a span of two days, 34, 000 innocents who also happened to be Jewish were murdered at Babi Y ar. Hiroshima: 130, 000 dead in a single day, Nagasaki, three days later, another 75, 000.

21．的确可以说，“9?11”事件是我们时代的危机，也是我们国家的爆发点，但它在历史上并非绝无仅有。这不是现代社会巾强大的外部力量对人类的第一次打击，这种力量也不是第一次被定义为邪恶。每一次危机似乎都产生了一种新模式，使这种暴行不会重演----可是暴行再一次出现。1941年，两天之内共有34，000无辜的犹太人在巴比谷惨遭杀害。在广岛，仅一天就有13万人丧生。仅隔三天，在长崎．又有75，OOO人失去生命。

Let's face it, history is a gallery of unspeakable crimes. A mushroom cloud blooming over a seaport city. a human being with her shin burned off, a skeletal corpse embracing a childsize skeletal corpse. A jet slicing through a skyscraper, a skyscraper collapsing upon itself. The nameless man and woman who plummeted, hand in hand, to their deaths from an upper floor of World Trade are caught in the mind’s eye of history as eternally as the lovers solidified in ash after the eruption of Pompeii. We tend these images like poisonous flowers in a nightmare garden, we return to them obsessively, hoping to excavate their meaning. What messages do Hiroshima and Babi Y ar, or Dresden and Antietam, have for us? What will September 11 tell us?

22．对这一切，我们要正视。历史就像一个画廊，让人们看到了罄竹难书的各种恶行。在这里，人们看到在一座海滨城市上空升起的蘑菇云，一个皮肤被烧焦的女人，一副骨架紧紧拥抱着一个小孩子大小的骨架，一架斜插过摩天大楼的飞机以及正在倒塌的摩天大楼。不知姓名的男男女女手拉手从世贸大厦的顶层坠下，奔向死亡。历史会像记住庞贝古城废墟中的恋人一样记住他们。我们把这些看作是梦魇花园中的毒花，常着魔似的想起它们，冥思苦想其中的含义。广岛、巴比谷、德累斯顿和安提坦留给我们什么启示?“9?11”事件又告诉我们什么?

Perhaps just this: that our suffering is not unique; that we haven’t yet got it right; and that the pursuit of peace continues to be the noblest of vocations.

23．答案可能就是：我们的痛苦不是惟一的痛苦；我们还没有完全摆脱痛苦；追求和平仍是我们最高尚的事业。

True Courage

24 "A country is only as strong as the people who make it up and the country turns into what the people want it lo become, " James Baldwin wrote. "We made the world we're, living in and we have lo make it over. "

真正的勇气

24．“组成一个国家的人民有多强大，这个国家就有多强大，人民希望周家如何发展，国家就会如何发展，”詹姆斯?鲍德温写道。“我们让我们现在居住的世界成了这个样子，我们有必要重建这个世界。”

How do we move from anxiety to action? From insecurity to confidence, from national paranoia to collective poise? Is our democracy so fragile that four airplane bombs can erode 225 years of

liberty?' It has never been more clear that we will only have true and lasting security when the rest of the world has true and lasting security, That is the challenge of this particular conflict, the struggle for the soul of the 21st century.

25．我们怎样才能不再焦虑，行动起来?怎样才能不冉恐慌，充满自信?全国上下怎样才能不再多疑．人人都安定下来?我们的民主果真如此不堪一击，225年的自由就这样被四个飞机炸弹毁掉?再明显不过．只有世界其他人民真正拥有永久和平时我们才会拥有和平。这就是这次冲突带给人们的挑战，也是一场保卫21世纪灵魂的斗争。

On the beautiful, glass-bright morning of September 11, a man—an ordinary, unremarkable American—called his wife on his cell phone. "We're all going lo die, " Thomas Burnett said as United Flight 93 careened over The Pennsylvania countryside, but some of us are going to do something about it.”' All we know of the rest of Tom Burnett's narrative is that his life ended horriby. He and his fellow passagers did not let what must have been abject fear prevent them from acting---- that is the true definition of courage.

26．9月11日的早晨是个美丽的早晨，阳光明媚。一个人----普通的美国人----用移动电话拨通了妻子的电话。“我们都不会活下来，”当联合航空公司93号航班在宾夕法尼亚郊外上空倾斜时托马斯?伯内特说，“但是我们当中会有人还击的。”我们只知道托马斯?伯内特后来死得很恐怖。他和同机的乘客没有因绝望的恐惧止步不前----这才是真正的勇气。

What happened aboard Flight 93 was the country’s first real victory against terrorism, and it came out of the tradition of democracy. The passengers came up with a plan and they voted on it. Some of the men would rush the hijackers and force the airliner to crash, rather than allow it to be used in another suicide attack on Washington D. C., where it was surely headed.

27．93号航班上发生的一切成为这个国家反对恐怖主义的第一个真正胜利，民主传统功不可没。机上乘客想出一个办法，并且投票决定。有的乘客要冲向劫匪，让飞机就地坠毁，使劫匪让华盛顿特区成为自杀性袭击目标的计划没有得逞。

It's a terrible irony that for a short time, while the condemned jet was aloft, the ideal of American democracy also reached its apex. The rest of us can only strive to do as well. Fortunately, Tom Burnett's last communication to the world was an unintentional gift to us all, a battle cry for the age of anxiety. We are all going to die sooner or later. Let that consciousness not prevent us from acting in each other's best interests, from trying to create a better, safer world.

28．这架注定要坠毁的飞机还在高空飞翔，恰恰在这短暂的时间里．美国的民主思想升华到了顶峰。两者的结合真是一种可怕的讽刺。我们其他人也会努力和他们一样。令人欣慰的是，托马斯?伯内特和这个世界最后的通话无意间成了我们共同的礼物，成了焦虑时代的战斗口号。的确，我们迟早都会死去，但这并不应该阻碍我们为彼此的最大利益挺身而出，全力建设一个更加美好、安全的世界。

(李丙奎译，国永荣审校)